(Finance) – On the occasion of the closing plenary session of the ninth edition of the Payments Fair, there were the projects admitted to the Third Call for Proposals of Milano Hub, the Innovation Center of the Bank of Italy, have been announced. After the first two Calls for Proposals, dedicated to technological topics such as artificial intelligence and DLT, the Third Call for Proposals focuses on a transversal theme such as digital paymentsas innovation enablers for banking, financial and insurance services and products, with particular attention to efficiency, security, traceability, interoperability, as well as financial inclusion and the ability to adapt to rapidly changing scenarios.
Gian Luca Trequattrini (General Official and Secretary of the Directorate of the Bank of Italy) underlined how, compared to the two previous Calls for Proposals (on AI and DLT), the third edition has a more concrete and immediate objective, as it is linked to the development of digital payments : “Payments are an integral part of the life of each of us, they are an indispensable component for the functioning of the financial system and the Digitalization is undoubtedly the defining challenge of our era“.
Central banks dedicate attention and commitment to payments, a sector that has always catalyzed innovation and promoted competition; digitalisation can give a strong acceleration to innovation, also taking into account the evolution of regulation, commented Trequattrini. It is therefore natural that the Bank of Italy has decided to make use of the Milano Hub channel to grasp market dynamics up close and understand which way the wind of innovation is blowing. Today we can say that the challenge has been taken up and that the answer is largely positivehe concluded.
The theme of the Third Call for Proposals was announced on June 5, 2024; 26 applications for participation were received from operators – Italian and foreign – such as banking intermediaries, technology providers, universities, start-ups, with proposals characterized by a great heterogeneity of use cases. They were 11 proposers selected with related projects.
For theFINTECH area: Experian Italia SpA with the project “Fraud Detection with GenAI for Buy Now Pay Later”, Liqex Italia Srl with the “B2Bridge” project, Next Digital Platform Srl with the project “The digital wallet as PoB (Point of Buy)”, School Mission Srl with the “ScuolaPay – Digital bank for schools” project, Verestro Joint Stock Company with the “Virtual cards for insurance companies” project.
For theINNOVATION area: CGN Fintech Srl with the “Open Banking for tax breaks” project, Fabrick SpA with the “Account Tokenization for A2A Payments” project, Intesa Sanpaolo SpA with the project “Innovative payment tools based on DLT”, TeamSystem Payments Srl with the project “Embedded Dynamic Discounting: short-term funding for SMEs”.
For theR&D area: DLT Science Foundation LTD with the project “The Liquidity Marketplace”, Politecnico di Milano with the project “The impact of e-money tokens in the payments ecosystem”.
Giancarlo Goretti (Head of the Milan Hub Innovation Center Division of the Bank of Italy) recalled that in the three Calls for Proposals launched so far, over 120 project initiatives have arrived, demonstrating the market’s interest and companies’ desire for innovation. The market responded positively both in terms of the number of applications and the quality of the proposals. Finally, the market’s interest in improving the user experience of consumers and businesses and exploiting the opportunities of instant payments to increase the quality and efficiency of the services offered, without neglecting emerging risk profiles, has emerged, he concluded.